Neither Cross Nor Crown

very fun game so far, dev rocks & good price, must play

Man what a clunky, janky, weird little game and yet I can't help but really like it. It's so bad in so many ways but it's also incredibly charming with an amazing presentation, cool environments and fun exploration and a combat that while really janky at first I've come to honestly kinda like once I got used to it. (altough sometimes it did feel downright non-functional against certain enemies at certain spots, mainly the mountains) Really the only big problem I have with this game is the bosses (all 2 of them) are terrible and easily the worst part of the game, thankfully you can skip the second one or one shot it with a gun (yes a medieval gun) but the first boss being the Flower Knight was just horrible. At the end of the day is this a good game? Ehhh I wouldn't be sure but I know that it was fun and memorable and honestly I would rather play something more janky but memorable and unique rather then something decent but forgettable or boring. I like this game :)

It's amateurish and unpolished, but in an earnest sort of way. There is something magical about a complete game made by a solo dev with a "damn the torpedoes" attitude. While most of it is quite simplistic, some parts of NCNC look lovely, and early parts of the game have a bunch of fun NPC dialogue. It's also pretty cool how zones have multiple paths through them, allowing to complete objectives in different ways, or to skip them altogether. Controls are terribly awkward though, and the default keyboard mapping is tailored for someone with 3 hands. Do yourself a favor and remap it to gamepad with Steam Input. The difficulty kind of goes off the deep end in the final couple of zones, where you have to face foes while balancing on narrow walkways, on awkward slopes or among tall grass that completely obscures your view.

After bashing my head against this game for a little over half an hour, I think I've finally figured out who this game is for: People who wished they could play a super-early alpha of Gothic where the bloodflies were even more annoying. What I really can't tell is whether the jank on contact with everything(third-person controls but no strafing, only turning, and core controls cannot be rebound for ???? reasons), and the combat that really is just like a worse version of Gothic's, is an intentional statement or just bad design. Clearly you can't be intended to actually fight everything that can be fought, because the combat is... bad, and you'd probably waste way more healing resources than you'd ever gain that way, especially because enemies generally do not drop anything. The actual workable way to play seems to be just running full tilt away from 90% of the game while grabbing stuff as you go, and reloading when you hit a dead end, a mean trap or get yourself cornered(by enemies or geometry, many bits of decorative design actually have hitboxes 80% larger than their apparent size). If this is auteur art, it is most definitely Not For Me. If this is just bad design, I wish the dev good luck on their next project and hope they learned something from this one.

Great little game! Reminds me of old school melee combat games.

Beautiful and ambitious little game! If you ever wondered what a more historical ""soulslike"" featuring real medieval iconography would look like, this kinda is it! The directional combat takes a bit of getting used to, but eventually manages to be quite fun. The environments as well are gorgeous and colorful and the use of real imagery from medieval sources for textures and enemy designs is a great idea that I haven't seen done quite like this before! The synthy soundtrack also sets just the right mood for a mystical knightly adventure. The main issues I have with this game stem from some of the level and encounter design as well as the general jankiness that is to be expected from a small-scale game like this. The port and mountain levels in particular feature way too many enemies, most of them of the exact same types. The exploration of the previous levels is basically replaced by repetitive encounters, which feels a bit like an attempt at padding game time, which is a shame. If you manage to look past these things though, it's definitely worth its small asking price. It also really makes me want to see a larger scale game in this style, featuring even more obscure medieval creatures and places from various medieval and renaissance manuscripts!

An absolutely awesome little journey, and not that short either, with phenomenal enviroments, cool weapons, tough enemies offering butt-clenching combat and the soundtrack absolutely slaps. Only complaint is that an acutal inventory would be nice, as currently you only replace items, except for the body armor for some reason. But other than that way better than expected, really oozing passion and more memorable than most Triple A games.